in transit forever

They gave him a green plastic transit card. He asked about seeing the world through new eyes.

A kind woman showed him how to slip past metal detectors and immigration.

It is a somnambulistic place. People sit whispering. Ten Europeans, couple of Brazilians, a few Lao. 

Outside the terminal are mountains, gray skies, white clouds.

Pakse is a small southern Lao town known for Khmer artifacts and access to dolphins avoiding dam projects. 

Just go. Go as in walk away. Be in transit forever.

It's simple. Just go. Stand up, start walking.

That's how adventures begin.

The only challenge is never leaving Laos. Never going to a border or exit/entry point. Ever never again.

Stay here forever and a day.

The great man belongs to history.

The great artist belongs to eternity.

I wonder

I wonder what would happen if
I treated everyone like I was in love
with them, whether I like them or not
and whether they respond or not and no matter
what they say or do to me and even if I see
things in them which are ugly twisted petty
cruel vain deceitful indifferent, just accept
all that and turn my attention to some small
weak tender hidden part and keep my eyes on
that until it shines like a beam of light
like a bonfire I can warm my hands by and trust
it to burn away all the waste which is not
never was my business to meddle with.

 - Derek Tasker  Read more…

zen mind

"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few."

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

heart sutra

Everything changes, everything passes,
 
Things appearing, things disappearing,
 
But when all is over—everything having appeared and disappeared,
 
Being and extinction both transcended— 
 
Still the basic emptiness and silence abides,
 
And that is blissful Peace.

wandering words

There are so many messages I can't interpret.
The hundred maples at the edge of my street shout orange, orange,
orange, in silent voices. And may say more if I could decipher.

How I want to understand the many calls of the birds migrating through
on their long journey. And what is the message of the shaggy
wave-curled sea quarreling around the black rocks out at the far point?

Perhaps words themselves wander off into other fields, like sheep lost
in the depths of the hills beyond the local hills so the shepherd has to
go climbing up and down, his legs aching, his breath heavy
in his chest until he spies them off there under

that far evergreen, and wrestles them down and brings them home.
 - Patricia Fargnoli
Pastoral
Then, Something
zen humanism
journal of a nobody
a poet reflects